


My Place

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Going way back to S2 Ep7 - This is a missing scene from the night Sarah and Jack stayed over at Holders'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Place

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't create these characters, but I love them as if I did!

My Place

They’re staying at my place, Linden and her kid.

 

She was scared when they showed up, said someone had been inside their motel room, moved stuff around, left that drawing on the fridge for her to find.  She tried to downplay it in front of Little Man, trying not to let on, but he knew, ‘course he did.  He’s smart.

 

When Linden told me what Stan Larsen said about not caring who Rosie’s real dad was I could totally relate. Because of Little Man.

 

Jack’s the bomb, if you ask me. He’s quiet, steady, got a wicked sense of humour. Rocks the sarcasm.  He cracks me up.  He hasn’t had a perfect life but he hasn’t done too badly either.  He’s a bit of a badass, cop’s kids, they have to be, right? But there’s still a softness to him as well.  Three weeks in and I’d take a bullet for him – I don’t care he ain’t got my DNA.

 

And as for his mama, well, I’m in so fucking deep already.  Had her pegged from practically day one.  I could have told you then that there was no way she was going to go and be some 50-year-old guy’s little wife, living in some ranch-style bungalow, sipping expensive wine.  That’s not her, never will be. Linden’s not a wife.

 

She’s also not one of those high-maintenance, buy-me-stuff, getting-my-nails-done gals, with all the talking and the laughing and wanting to make you meet all their girlfriends and shit like that.  Thank God.

 

Linden doesn’t say anything unless she’s got something real to say.  She’s got a rocking body but she lets you figure that out for yourself. And when she drinks its something like a jack and coke or a beer with a shot and when she wants a piece of ass she doesn’t want it to take too long.  And she wants a cigarette after and you’d better not be giving her any grief about it either.

 

I know she’s a bit nuts.  Been watching for days, seeing it. I don’t care. Everybody’s got their shit, you know?  And I don’t care what her excuse is for coming here tonight – I tried not to look too over the moon about it but yeah, I am.  She doesn’t get that yet and that’s a good thing.  Because if she knew how I really feel about her, about both of them actually, she’d be gone, baby, gone.

 

Thing is though, it was no excuse.  She was right to get out of there.  There’s this car outside, it’s been watching my place for hours now.  I’m pretty sure it showed up right after they did, followed them.   I don’t have to run the plates to know where it came from.  So I’m sitting here in the dark, on security guard detail, while the two of them snore it out in my room.

 

That is until I hear her in the hall, in the bathroom first, then pausing outside the bedroom door, looking my way.

 

“I’m up,” I tell her, quiet.

 

She comes forward to the end of the hall.  She’s curious, one foot rubbing the top of the other.

 

“Not sleeping?” her voice floats out of the dark, a wisp.

 

 “Nah.  But I’m gonna.  Soon.”  I tell her, then, “What’s up with you?  Mattress too soft for your hard ass?”

 

I can’t really see her face but I can hear the smile in her voice.

 

“No, it’s good.  Jack’s out cold.”

 

I know she hardly sleeps.  Part of her problem if you ask me.

 

I stand up and go over there.

 

“I got melatonin in the kitchen,” I tell her, “I had it back in the summer when I was trying to get my shit together.  It’s the extra-strength one.  It’s like a hit over the head.”

 

Jesus, she’s moving right up to me.  I can smell her hair – it’s down - smoke from driving around with me all day.  What the hell is she doing?

 

She’s about an inch away from my chest and she’s not stopping when I reach out for her, just a little, one hand on her back, barely touching.  Getting hard already. She sees.

 

“Little Man...” I say to her, she nods, says, “Yeah. I know. I just want…”

 

Then she turns around, puts her back to me, and in slow motion she pushes me back to the wall and leans up against me.

 

Linden’s such a force, such a presence, that I always forget how tiny she is.  In her bare feet she is really little.  Leaning against me she weighs, like, nothing.  My arm is around the front of her now, and I can feel her heart tap-tap-tapping away, but it’s not hammering like mine is.  The top of her head is just right there.  I put my face down and breathe her in.

 

I just want…

 

And then she’s taking my hand and she’s lifting up her sweatshirt and she’s pulling down the elastic on her sleep pants – and  God Linden don’t you dare -  and she’s got my hand, which is shaking now by the way, and she lays it flat down on her belly and she holds it there with both of hers.

 

I have no fucking idea what I am supposed to do now. But what I do know is that there is no way Jack Linden is going to wake up to the sound of me banging his mother.

Thing is, we already hooked up once before.  Early on, about a week, week and a half in.  I don’t remember much of it.  I’d been up for like 36 hours straight – I was brain-fried, punchy.  She’d been driving me back to my car and it was late.  I’d been laughing at some stupid thing I’d said, and she shot me one of those “You’re such an idiot,” looks of hers.  But she did it sort of _nicely._

She was sort of smiling to herself and then she started trying to pull out her hair tie thing – said it was giving her a headache – and it was not coming out easy so I took it out for her, careful not to pull.  I’d expected her to smack my hand away but she didn’t, she thanked me.  So for some crazy reason – just wanted to get a rise out of her I guess – I started messing up her hair a bit.  And…nothing.  She let me so I kept it up.  And then she told me, it felt good.  Shook her head, messed it all up, the big sigh.

 

So like an idiot I said something like, that she’d better not be expecting me to kiss her or some shit.  Because in truth that is really what I felt like doing, had felt like doing all goddamn day, and it was the middle of the night and I was loopy and I just couldn’t shut my mouth.  

 

And then before I knew it she had pulled the car into some random lot and she was undoing her seatbelt and she looked over at me and said, “Want to?” and about three minutes after that we were screwing.

 

Like I said, I don’t remember much. The PVR inside my caffeine-and-nicotine-addled-sleep- deprived brain was not recording very well, which is too bad because I’d love to have the replay.  I mean, months of nothing real and then I get with her? C’mon.

 

It was mostly a blur.  I remember she had her hands on top of mine to make sure I did stuff right. And I remember feeling the little muscles on the insides of her thighs shaking.  I told her she was fucking gorgeous because a) she is and b) I figured this might be the only moment in time that I would be able get away with it – there was no way I was getting kicked out of the car at that point.

 

Later when I was thinking about it, wondering what the hell had happened, I thought maybe she was just throwing me a bone because I’d told her about the celibacy thing.  Like she took it as a challenge or something.  And I couldn’t even figure out if she liked me at all.   I mean, at that point most of the time I felt like I was being tolerated, and barely at that. But then she’d go and do something like take the heat for my wiretap fuckup. So go figure.  Also this was back when she was still supposed to be leaving town any minute, even though she kept missing flights.  So I thought maybe she just wanted one last kick at the can with a still-sort-of-youngish guy before she settled down with Viagra Man.

 

Whatever. By the next day I figured that she was probably just as nuts as I was at that particular second and that she’d probably never meant for it to happen in the first place. She’d probably just gotten sick of being keyed up and frustrated and pissed off.  And the way she was acting, I knew damn fine well that I’d better not mention it, ever, and I’d better not be sniffing around looking for more, or I’d be shot and pissed on.  Or more accurately, with Linden, shot, pissed on, and then shot again.  So that was fine.  It was a one-off.  File it.

 

But now, I know different.  At least I think I do.  Things have changed a lot between us since then.  The intensity is way, way up.  This case, and how it’s playing out for both of us, I feel like she’s all that I have, as crazy as that sounds.  Not only that, but she’s all that I need.  And I know that’s a risky and foolish way to feel, because those scenarios never work out. But it’s beyond my control.  I swear, this woman is in my brain and no one else will be getting in there anytime soon.  It’s happening – for real.

 

The fact that she came here with her son tonight blew me away.  She could have gone anywhere and she came to _my place_.  So I know she trusts me and that’s huge.  Because she didn’t, not at all.  And just when she was starting to I let her down massively.  And she still saved my sorry ass.  She won’t let me in much, and she won’t let me help her much, but just the fact that she is here is enough.  It tells me maybe I’m off the hook.  In a way I can’t wait to see how this plays out.  But let me tell you I’m terrified as well.

 

Her stomach is smooth and warm and tight as a drum. I’m trying not to move my hand but it’s still a little jittery under both of hers. I’m getting good at reading her but I wouldn’t try to predict her tonight. So I’m thinking I’ll just wait her out and I keep quiet.

 

It’s not working very well though. She feels so good and she smells so good that within seconds my idiot brain is trying to talk me into some sort of deal.  Then I just barely hear the sound of a car engine turning over, then tires on wet pavement.  Linden pulls my hand up then and turns around, leaning against me.  She looks up and makes eye contact for a split second before she lays her face against my chest.  Her cheek is hot on my skin even through my t-shirt.  Then she literally turns the other cheek, drags her face across my chest.  OK that’s enough.

 

“Your K-I-D,” I say to her, the barest whisper, and just saying it is enough to take some of the wind out of my sails.  No way.  Not with the kid right there and some crazy Indian tailing us.  There’s lots of chances. It doesn’t have to be tonight.

‘Yeah,” she agrees, takes a half a step back, looking up with her eyes glowing in the little bit of light that is coming in from the street.  The tiniest smile. She takes another half step back and when I let go of her the loss settles into my stomach like a cold stone.

 

And I could cry – from joy – when she says, “But soon Holder,” with that decisive little nod she has.

 

“I’ll save it for you,” I tell her, which wins me the extremely rare Sarah Linden Trifecta – the smile, the eye roll, _and_ the head shake.  Gotcha.

 

So I step off, and she turns back to the bedroom.

 

“Is she gone?” she asks me over her shoulder, “It was her, right?”

 

Busted.  She misses nothing, this one.

 

I’m back on the couch, looking.  Yeah, she’s gone.

 

“She’s gone Linden.  Get your sleep girl. I got this.”

 

So as much as I wish the situation was a bit different right now I actually feel pretty ok, laying on the couch with one eye still on the street.  Doing the right things.  Being the man.  The provider, the protector, unselfish, keeping watch.

 

With absolutely no idea of how badly the shit is going to hit the fan tomorrow.

 

  

 


End file.
